Why Steeler Fans are Afraid: The Ten Biggest Sports Team Shakeups

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We tend not to think about our beloved home team as a business, but the truth is that a sports franchise, like any other business, can be bought and sold at any time.

So when an aspiring owner antes up the right amount, a team’s loyal supporters inevitably start a cycle of worry unique to the diehard sports fan and centered on one all-important question: Are they going to move?

Ask anyone in Pittsburgh. Late last week, financier Stanley Druckenmiller announced he is in talks to acquire the Steelers from the Rooney family, who has owned them since 1932. (That year the clan's patriarch, Art Rooney Sr., purchased the team for a mere $2,500; today the team is valued as high as $1.2 billion!)

Druckenmiller promised that if a deal goes down, the team would stay in Steel town: “My primary objective is to do what is in the best interests of the Pittsburgh Steeler franchise, the fans [and] the city of Pittsburgh.”

While his words may be sincere, ownership change can bring fortune or failure. But whatever happens to the Steelers, they’ll have company. Here is how some top sports franchises fared when money exchanged hands, new stadiums were built, and moves off the field rivaled those on it.

1. THE NEW YORK YANKEES
MANAGEMENT CHANGE: A group of investors led by George Steinbrenner purchased the Yankees from CBS (CBS) in 1973, but not without a little drama. Then team president and minority partner Michael Burke quit after Gabe Paul, a veteran baseball executive, was named senior Yankee executive. Burke, however, remained a minority owner of the team over the next decade.
MONEY MATTERS: CBS sold the Bronx Bombers for $10 million. Today, the team is valued at $1.3 billion.
WHAT THE FANS GOT: A new—and volatile—chapter in baseball history thanks to Boss Steinbrenner; six more world championships (they now have 26); Billy Martin's numerous firings and rehirings; Reggie Jackson's October heroics and Jason Giambi's moustache.

2. THE NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS
MANAGEMENT CHANGE: When Robert Kraft bought the New England Patriots in 1994, he vowed to bring a championship home (but not before first considering moving the team's home stadium from Massachusetts to Connecticut).
MONEY MATTERS: Kraft spent $172 million on a team that had won “less than half of its games since 1959,” according to Forbes. Today the Patriots are worth more than $1.2 billion, a majority of Kraft’s fortune.
WHAT THE FANS GOT: Three Super Bowl titles, four conference championships and seven division titles. Not bad for a team that barely won a playoff game in the pre-Kraft years.

3. THE BROOKLYN DODGERS
MANAGEMENT CHANGE: On October 8, 1957, after his team had played 86 seasons in Brooklyn, Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley broke the hearts of Brooklyn fans when he shipped the team to California. (The New York Giants, who played in Manhattan’s Polo Grounds, also moved west that year.) O'Malley originally wanted to replace famed Ebbets Field with a higher-capacity stadium in Brooklyn but clashed with powerful City Building Commissioner Robert Moses on a site. (Moses wanted it in Queens, where Shea Stadium now stands.) Instead, O’Malley began talks with officials from Los Angeles, who offered him suitable stadium land.
MONEY MATTERS: While Dodger Stadium remained under construction, the team played at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, site of the 1932 Olympics. The Coliseum's original cost was nothing compared to the $23 million price tag of Dodger Stadium (that would be about $173 million in today's dollars) – all of which was privately funded.
WHAT THE FANS GOT: It’s hard to overstate the wound the move of Brooklyn’s beloved “Bums” inflicted on the proud borough psyche. A New York court would later pronounce it “one of the most infamous abandonments in the history of sport.” The Los Angeles Dodgers went on to win five championships, to Brooklyn’s one.

4. THE BALTIMORE COLTS
MANAGEMENT CHANGE: After 30 years in Baltimore, the Colts saddled up and headed to Indianapolis in 1984, but not without controversy. The city of Baltimore refused to grant Colts owner Robert Irsay a new stadium, as attendance and the team's performance dwindled. The city even threatened to seize ownership of the Colts after word spread that Irsay had entered in talks with Indianapolis and Phoenix. Once Irsay and the city of Indianapolis reached a deal, the team packed up and snuck out of town in the dead of night.
MONEY MATTERS: To woo the Colts, Indianapolis supplied a $12.5 million loan, a $4 million training complex and a brand new $77 million stadium, then known as the Hoosier Dome but since renamed the RCA Dome (for a few million more, of course).
WHAT THE FANS GOT: Baltimore eventually got the "Art Modell" franchise, formerly known as The Browns, which for legal reasons had to be renamed the Ravens. A Super Bowl title came in 2000. Indianapolis, meanwhile, got to enjoy the Manning years. Drafted in 1998, Peyton Manning proved to be a worthy first draft pick. Since then, the Colts made it to six division championships and won Super Bowl XLI in 2006.

5. THE HOUSTON OILERS
MANAGEMENT CHANGE: Call it a trend: Oilers owner Bud Adams opened secret talks with Nashville’s mayor after Houston officials rejected his request for a new stadium. After a disappointing season in 1996, Adams was let out of his contract one year early and the Oilers moved to Tennessee.
MONEY MATTERS: City officials in Nashville promised to provide the Oilers with $144 million toward a new stadium.
WHAT THE FANS GOT: At the end of 1999, the Oilers became the Tennessee Titans – a name that “reflected power, strength, leadership and other heroic qualities.” A new stadium, LP Field, was also constructed. It holds approximately 69,000, and cost $290 million. Houston football lovers, after six long years of pigskin-less Sundays, eventually got a team back, too: The Houston Texans entered the league as an expansion team in 2002.

6. THE MONTREAL EXPOS
MANAGEMENT CHANGE: The Expos started as an expansion team in 1969 season. A series of ownership changes over the years ended with major league baseball purchasing the team from art dealer (and current Marlins owner) Jeffrey Loria in 2002. Declining attendance at Olympic Stadium—the Expos were regularly drawing less than 10,000 fans a game—led the MLB partnership that owned the team to seek a relocation site. In 2005, the Expos were shipped to the nation’s capital, where they were renamed the Nationals.
MONEY MATTERS: Loria had purchased his controlling interest in 1999 for $12 million. He later spent another $18 million to gain near total ownership. Major league baseball bought the team from him in 2002 for four times that amount ($120 million). A group of Washington, D.C. businessmen purchased the team in 2006 for $450 million.

WHAT THE FANS GOT: Expos fans, on the balance, got nothing. Major league ownership’s refusal to adequately fund payroll and poor management prior to that had led to countless losing seasons and a dwindling fan base. Diehard Montreal fans, perhaps rightly, feel they were cheated out of a team. Baseball fans in the District of Columbia, on the flip side, got a team after decades without one.

8. THE ANAHEIM ANGELS
MANAGEMENT CHANGE: One year after the Angels won their first and only World Series Championship, Disney (DIS) decided it was time to sell the team. Fifty-six-year-old Arte Moreno, a minority owner investor in the Arizona Diamondbacks, bought the team in 2003, becoming the first Latino to hold majority ownership of a major league team.
MONEY MATTERS: Disney sold the Anaheim Angels for $180 million—$33 million less than what the company originally paid. Earlier that same year, Forbes valued the Angels at $225 million.
WHAT THE FANS GOT: Um…a new name? In January 2004, Moreno announced he would change the team's name, despite contract language prohibiting it. Moreno pulled off the name change and the team is now known as the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

9. THE CHARLOTTE HORNETS
MANAGEMENT CHANGE: In 2000, Hornets owner George Shinn outraged fans after a slew of bad decisions—he shipped Eddie Jones and Anthony Mason to the Miami heat, traded Alonso Mourning and ownership talks with Michael Jordan disintegrated when Shinn refused to let Jordan control basketball operations. Worst of all, Shinn threatened to move the team out of Charlotte if a new arena wasn’t built cost-free to him. After a few years of legal battles, the Hornets moved to New Orleans, while Charlotte gained a new expansion team, the Bobcats.
MONEY MATTERS: Although the New Orleans Arena suffered minor damage as a result of Hurricane Katrina, the team relocated to Oklahoma City for two years. To move back, Shinn reportedly spent $10 million—a tab he hopes never to have to pay again.
WHAT THE FANS GOT: With the move to the Big Easy, the Hornets faced a rough start after being placed in the competitive Southwest Division of the Western Conference—teams included the San Antonio Spurs, the Houston Rockets, the Memphis Grizzlies, and the Dallas Mavericks. After their return to New Orleans in 2007, the Hornets won their first division title and made it to the Western Conference semi-finals.

10. THE CHICAGO CUBS
MANAGEMENT CHANGE: Prior to the Tribune's Company's (TRB) acquisition of the Chicago Cubs in 1981, three generations of the Wrigley family owned the team.
MONEY MATTERS: The Tribune Co. bought the Cubs for $20.5 million. Tribune-owner Sam Zell has since made several attempts to sell the team, to no avail.
WHAT THE FANS GOT: The Tribune Co. also owned cable station WGN, which allowed the media company to broadcast Cubs games in other markets. But the sale didn't help the club's record. Since the Red Sox won their first championship in 2004 (after 85 years), Cubs fans now suffer the longest title-less drought: The Cubbies haven’t won it all since 1908.